SHUM 2792

Monuments, Museums, and Memory: An Introduction to Public History

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2020-2021.

In this course we will examine how we have come to narrate social, cultural, and political history in the United States, investigating the ways scholarly, curatorial, archival, and creative practices shape conceptions of the American past, in particular understandings of racial, gender, sexual, and class oppression and resistance. Students will build skills in historical interpretation and archival research and explore possibilities and challenges in preserving and presenting the past in a variety of public contexts—monuments, memorials, museums, historical sites, movies and television, and community-based history projects. For their final project, students will conduct original research in a digital or material archive, chosen in consultation with the instructor, to produce a draft of an exhibit, providing popularly accessible historical context and interpretation.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (HA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS)

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